As the use of mobile wireless devices, such as smart phones and tablet devices, becomes more ubiquitous, the demands on the limited amount of radio frequency spectrum used by those devices also increases, resulting in wireless network congestion and reduced bandwidth for devices operating in the licensed spectrum. In addition, the increased use of high bandwidth applications such as audio and video streaming can increase demands beyond the capability of the available spectrum.
Various techniques exist to offload data traffic from a Wireless Wide Area Network (WWAN) (e.g., a 4G 3GPP-LTE or WiMAX network) to secondary networks such as a Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) (e.g., a Wireless Fidelity (Wi-Fi) network operating according to a standard from the IEEE 802.11 family) or a Wireless Personal Area Network (WPAN) (e.g., a network operating according to a Bluetooth or an IEEE 802.15 family standard). WWAN carriers, however, generally are not provisioned for operation in unlicensed spectrum, and rely on complex device and network integration to conduct offloading of data traffic to a secondary network. For example, offloading data traffic from a 4G WWAN to a Wi-Fi WLAN may require specific multiple Radio Access Technologies (multi-RAT) functionality to be programmed into the communicating devices, and might only be deployed across the same operator's 4G and managed Wi-Fi networks.